La Presse Invents a “Racist” Statement and
Falsely Attributes it to Gordon

No French Canadian will attain
to a key post in Canadian National
because these are given on merit

— Donald Gordon

by Marcel GINGRAS

He vigorously defended himself yesterday against this prejudice, even going so far as to testify to desiring the presence of the greatest possible number of French speaking university graduates at Canadian National.

DONALD GORDON

“Is that not discrimination”, Mr. Grégoire then asked the president who had just said several times that appointments like those desired would be discrimination.

Having noted to the president that he had heard the same refrain for nine years, Mr. Chevrier asked him if he would not give more attention to the question in the future.

“No”, replied Mr. Gordon, adding that a number of French speaking Canadians had refused promotions because they did not want to leave Quebec.

Mr. Léon Balcer

Tongue-tied during this debate, the Transport Minister, Mr. Balcer, would have liked to make the government’s views known on this subject, but the rules forbade him from doing so.

A few hours later in the Commons, Mr. Grégoire invited him to comment on the remarks of Mr.Gordon, but the rigid application of the rules by the president, [Mr.] Lambert prevented him from doing so.

Reached outside the Commons, the Minister indicated that in the field of appointments belonging to him, the government takes account of the aspirations of French speaking Canadians.

He thus appointed three of them to the “board of directors” of the railway when he increased the number of members of this board from seven to twelve. In the era of the Liberal regime, just one of the seven administrators was of the French language.

Nonetheless, powerless to dictate the conduct of this same board, the government must leave the choice of members to the “board of directors”, including that of the 17 vice presidents.

For the moment, if Mr. Gordon is to be believed, no French speaking employee of the company is qualified to fulfill one of the key posts of this State enterprise which lives as much on the public monies of French speaking Canadians as on those of English speaking Canadians.

En toutes lettres, the president said he “se ficher” the ethnic origin of the members of the board of directors, adding that several of them speak French.

Invited yesterday by the parliamentary committee on Railways to facilitate the accession of a French speaking Canadian to one of the seventeen vice presidencies of Canadian National, he totally refused, alleging that to do so would be to make unfair ethnic distinctions, – discrimination, he said.

“Never,” he specified, will a man attain to one of these posts for the sole reason that he is French speaking.  The current directors of the company have twenty to thirty years of service.”

In addition, still according to Mr. Gordon, there is no question of going to look for a renowned industrialist among French speaking Canadians to make a vice president, because these posts are given based on merit.

These remarks, and others of the same order, were served up by Mr. Gordon to the 26 members of the committee, who had to view them as nothing but inflammatory, he believed. [sic]

One of them, Mr. Gilles Grégoire, Social Credit from Lapointe nonetheless trapped him when he asked what his own experience had been at Canadian National when he became president.

“None”, confessed Mr. Gordon, who, at the time of his appointment, had been executive director of the International bank for reconstruction and development.

In ten or twelve years

Wishing to prove his good faith, the president indicated that 23 per cent of young employees in recent years came from French-language universities in Québec.

When I return to this committee in a dozen years, he said, you will see that our recruitment will have borne fruit.

Ten years from now, he let it be understood, the new arrivals would have proved themselves and Canadian National will then be in a position to offer them one of the management posts, or even a vice-presidency.

Earlier, in the course of questioning, Mr. Chevrier had affirmed that he was able to cite a number of names of French speaking Canadians who would have made excellent vice presidents, Mr. Jean-Louis Lévesque, for example, he said.

It is the 20-year-old policy that must be criti-